I think he had a great off-season for UFAs in 2009, along with a shrewd Ehrhoff trade - and in 2010 followed up with more good UFA signings and a good trade deadline.

Now in 2011 he basically stood pat in the off-season, other than signing Sturm and trading Ehrhoff when he wouldn't sign, and then made a couple of bold deals (Booth, Kassian) that did not contribute to a long playoff run.

ODB wrote:I want Luongo to stay and wanted AV to be fired... Can’t always get what you want!

Gillis, I'm happy he was re-signed. I think he's made mistakes but he's definitely earned the opportunity to finish what he's started.

His decision to keep AV on board has shaken my confidence butt, I'm still prepared to back GMMG... for now. Things could change if he fucks up the Lou trade, draft and July 1st. His 2012 off season has to be much better than 2011!

I know you're a big Lou supporter Ohdee, but outta curiosity, are you wanting to trade Schneider or are you more in favor of going with both?

I also would like to hear your reasons for keeping Lou over Schneider given that it has been pretty clear that the team has played much better and looked calmer in front of Schneider. Numbers aren't enough in this case as Schneider's are better but 68 career games is not nearly enough to be using stats as a decent comparisson.

I posted about this in another thread much to the chagrin of the Gillis Campaigners around here, i.e. Coco-Canuck. Who doesn't like anyone say anything bad about Gillis.

In defense of Gillis, since he showed up here the Canucks have finished no lower than 7th overall. That really isn't a strong place to be going into the draft if you are hoping to load up on prospects. Detroit is really the only team I can think of that has truly found real "diamonds in the rough" in the later rounds.

I am not the biggest Gillis fan, but I won't say that he's terribad either. He's probably not as good as most think, but still a decent GM overall I guess. I think he was a super lucky and inherited a team from Burke/Nonis that left him with a lot of solid pieces to build around. It's not like he took over a team like the Atlanta Thrashers and had to build from nothing.

One thing with Gillis, I'm not sure if he doesn't have the balls or just thinks what was left with him was fine, but he never really cleaned house and put his own stamp on the team. Usually a new GM would bring a lot of his own people into an organization, but Gillis kept most of the core players (Sedins, Kes, Lou, etc) , scouts (Ron Delorme) and coach (AV) from the previous regime. I guess being a prior agent rather than working in a management for a NHL team team, he didn't have that many connections/experience to bring in his own personel.

I think a couple of Gillis moves may come back to really haunt him. First the Ballard trade for Grabner, Bernier and 1st (Howden). Grabner had a great year the previous year, but came back down to earth this year. He probably wouldn't have put those numbers up with the Nucks, but it's always good to have depth. Howden looks like a solid prospect who would look good in the organization. However, more than anything, Ballard has never really fit in with this team and no one really knows what is his role. His salary for the limited time he plays is a waste of cap space. Also factor in the fact that this money could have been used to keep Ehrhoff, but instead the team had it's hands tied and had to let Ehrhoff walk. Look @ Edler in the 2nd half of season and playoffs and he really struggled, he was put in to play offensive/defensive roles and had to play physical, it was just too much for him and he couldn't handle it. A guy like Erhoff took a lot of pressure off him cuz Christian could play the PP and eat up a lot of important minutes.

Secondly, the Hodgson/Kassian trade. I'll be the first to admit that Kassian is the type of guy we need in the organization, but I really wouldn't have given up on Coho, especially since we waited all this time for him to develop, he was starting to deliver on becoming that player that we hoped he would become and bam, we trade him. With Hank showing signs of declining and Kes showing some wear and tear on his body, a slick young centre waiting on the wings to take over the reigns and ready to step in would be really nice to have around. Also, this years playoffs was basically a write off cuz we traded a roster player for a guy who was not NHL ready. Would Coho have made a diffence vs the Kings? Probably not, but u never know. Hopefully this trade will work out for both teams, Coho will have a nice career in Buffalo and Kass becomes that big physical forward that averages 20-25 goals for us, for Gillis's sake and us fans. With Burr and Edler becoming UFAs in 1 year and the Sedins in 2, the window for the canucks to win is quickly closing. Hopefully Gillis can deliver the goods before the core of the team's time is up. The core that was left behind for him.

Vpete wrote:I had a two friends in the states who used to argue about politics all the time, one was a Republican and the other was a Democrat. The Repub used to tell the Dem that the only reason Clinton was good was that he only had to ride on the economic coattails of Reagan and Bush senior.

The Dems response was that at least Clinton was not dumb enough to screw it all up like Bush jr. That's kind of how I look at Gillis. He knows what he has, knows how it got there and has done everything to maximize his assets while taking some risks. Everyone has a shelf life but like Clinton he deserves another run just because he didn't screw everything up.

While I tend to not favour the 'you done good by not screwing up' approach, at least in business, politicians get a little more leeway from me in that area.

Yes but isn't this in fact a business... and wasn't Clinton impeached for lying*.

* all GMs lie

Ask Ken Starr about how that impeachment went. And yep Doc it is a business so Gillis had better do some deft moves this summer.

Brick Top: Do you know what "nemesis" means? A righteous infliction of retribution manifested by an appropriate agent. Personified in this case by an 'orrible cunt... me.

I posted about this in another thread much to the chagrin of the Gillis Campaigners around here, i.e. Coco-Canuck. Who doesn't like anyone say anything bad about Gillis.

Hockeysfuture is a terrible resource for drawing conclusions like this, and it's unfair to expect something that is offered for free to be anything otherwise.

They simply don't have the resources to be able to know which organizations have Chris Tanevs, Eddie Lacks and so on - and which don't. Basically what you're getting in these organizational rankings is a list of which teams have the most/best propects that everyone already knows.

Anyway there's no much point getting into it further because Strangelove does a brilliant job demonstrating this looking at their rankings seven years ago which of course did not have Alex Edler pegged as a future All Star, did not have Alex Burrows and Jannik Hansen listed as even valuable assets..

Mike Gillis is most definitely standing on the shoulders of his predecessors, just like Dave Nonis and Brian Burke were, and hell even Pat Quinn built his team trading players and assets he inherited from his predecessor. No one can claim he is 100% responsible for the team's success on the ice, but to use previous GMs' work to discredit what he's done equally silly - since very few GMs practice a scorched earth policy when joining a new organization (and those that do invariably ride out years-long periods of losing).

I think in his time here, Mike Gillis has shown himself to be a meticulous GM with a coherent idea about what his hockey team should look like, who looks at results, identifies issues and more often than not proceeds to address them.

I don't think you can say that about Brian Burke or Dave Nonis, really - Burke did a decent job building this team but allowed issues to fester for years, as did Dave Nonis who in hindsight was really just minding the store (outside of the Luongo deal).

Anyway. He seems at this point to be an improvement for the organization, although obviously his legacy won't be decided until he moves on - and could be largely defined by a few factors we can't even begin to judge (like many others I feel this offseason is a crossroads for the organization, and we will need years to determine the success or failure of the Canucks drafting in Gillis' tenure).

RoyalDude wrote:Um, and loaded with a group of very good young players on the verge of hitting their prime, and not just good players in one of the 3 area's of a team ie, Forward, Defense and Goaltending, but good players in all 3 of those areas. Everybody knew they were going to be a good team when Gillis took over and Nonis was fired. Shit, we could have parked Jack Gordon's coffin in the press boxes as our GM and the results would have been the same as they were for Gillis.

This is what I don't get - RD says big deal, Gillis inherited the core, but Nonis had the same core and missed the playoffs 2 out of 3 years. Gillis has won the President's Trophy 2/4 years and gotten more playoff wins than Burke/Nonis combined in over 10 years.

When I think of the Nonis years, I think of Brad Isbister being slotted in on the first line. I thought Nonis was terrible at identifying team needs and evaluating players to fit those needs. Nonis built a team of 2 first-liners and a slew of 3rd/4th liners, whereas Gillis has built a team of 3 first liners and a slew of 2nd/3rd liners.